


From Eden

by ObliObla



Series: Lucifer Songfics [6]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Established Relationship, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-07 08:25:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18232370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: He doesn’t smell of anything.Under the expensive cologne, the whiskey, the cigarettes, there’s a strange sterility.For Lucifer Bingo prompt: Ashes





	1. In Eden

**Author's Note:**

> All the thanks to my lovely betas [matchstick_dolly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchstick_dolly/pseuds/matchstick_dolly), [Miah_Arthur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miah_Arthur/pseuds/Miah_Arthur), [puerile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/puerile/pseuds/puerile), and [TheYahwehDance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheYahwehDance/pseuds/TheYahwehDance). You are all amazing.
> 
> Babe, there’s something tragic about you  
> Something so magic about you  
> Don't you agree?  
> Babe, there’s something lonesome about you  
> Something so wholesome about you  
> Get closer to me
> 
> No tired sigh, no rolling eyes, no irony  
> No “who cares”, no vacant stare, no time for me
> 
> Babe, there’s something wretched about this  
> Something so precious about this  
> Where to begin?  
> Babe, there’s something broken about this  
> But I might be hoping about this  
> Oh, what a sin
> 
> To the strand, a picnic planned for you and me  
> A rope in hand for your other man to hang from a tree
> 
> Honey you’re familiar like my mirror years ago  
> Idealism sits in prison; chivalry fell on its sword  
> Innocence died screaming, honey ask me, I should know  
> I slithered here from Eden just to hide outside your door
> 
> -Hozier-

> You lie in our bed as if an orchard were over us.
> 
> You are what’s fallen from those fatal boughs.
> 
> Where will we go when they send us away from here?

  
-David Ferry-

* * *

 

He doesn’t smell of anything.

Under the expensive cologne, the whiskey, the cigarettes, there’s a strange sterility. Humans have distinct scents. They sweat, ingest, excrete—these markers that are unsettling in their absence. He’s naked, curled on her crisp, white sheets and she watches the shifting of his ribs as he breathes, steady in sleep. This, at least, feels mortal but, as she’s drawn closer, the illusion shatters again. His warmth soaks into her, even from a hand’s breadth away. Not body heat conducting, but starlight radiating.

Her phone buzzes against the bed, too ordinary for this liminal moment. Dan’s bringing Trixie over after lunch. Her smile comes involuntarily as she responds, drops her earthly concerns—for the moment—and returns her attentions to celestial matters that are blinking with wakefulness.

“Everything alright?” he asks, turning to watch her with dark eyes that take the morning sun and amplify it.

She hums, fingers catching against his jaw of their own volition. There’s no sleep roughness in his voice and, as she leans into his kiss, no bitterness on his breath. He tastes of fire—and she didn’t know before she knew him that fire _has_ a flavor, not smoke but heat, electric on her tongue. She pulls back, whispers against his lips.

“Trixie’s not coming till later.”

He grins, sliding down her body, pulling aside the blanket. He goes down on her slowly, methodically, until she can hardly breathe through the pleasure. She pushes his head away, fingers tangling in his hair; she wants to keep him close but he makes no move to pull back, wiping his mouth and crawling up to kiss her neck. He presses into her, hips moving like pistons, thumb drawing careful circles against her. She’s left a panting mess, sheets sticking to her sweaty back while he lounges next to her, breaths slow and even. And she wouldn’t complain— _can’t_ really. He’s not perfect, but he always, _always_ tries. And in this…

She excuses herself to the bathroom, unable to hide from the sun peeking through the curtains, and watches her reflection in the mirror, sex messed and worrying at her lip. She’s never considered herself vain. Even as an actress, she only acquiesced to the beautifying her mother forced on her. But her eyes can’t help but catch on the subtle lines, the stretch marks… all the signs of her own mortality. It’s easier to pretend when they’re working, or with Trixie, or even arguing, that they’re normal. That _he’s_ normal. But when they’re in his domain—and they may be in her house, but this is still indisputably _his_ —there’s always something alien tainting their intimacy.

She blinks and he’s stepped in behind her, wrapping the hot brands of his arms around her waist. There’s a loose floorboard just within the threshold of the door he’s never drawn a creak from though she, even with her slighter weight, always does. Her traitorous body responds to his closeness, pressing back against him as he noses into her hair. She reaches out a shaking hand and flips the light off, but she can still feel his eyes on her. They glint from the shadows—almost feline in their shimmer—and it’s worse than the revealing fluorescence was. She turns in his embrace, burying her face against his chest. His strangeness permeates even this simple motion, but he feels more familiar now than anyone else ever has.

She wonders sometimes about his preternatural draw. He’s said she’s immune—and he wouldn’t lie—but _still_ … it’d be so much easier that way. Without that certainty, one way or the other, she’s adrift, even as she ruts ineffectually against his leg, scratches her nails over his back. But _his_ hands are strangely chaste, one cradling her head, the other stroking pleasurably, but not carnally, down the line of her spine.

His apparent reticence grows clear as he murmurs into her hair, “Would you tell me what’s the matter?”

Part of her wants to scream and rant and rave, but the weaker part—made strong by his presence—wants him again. Even if he _is_ detached and dispassionate as machinery, he’s still the best she’s ever had, maybe the best there ever could be. And he loves her, doesn’t he? So she bites back the acid on her tongue, smiles against his skin. “Nothing. I’m… _perfect_.” She doesn’t have to fake the honeyed moan that leaves her lips.

But he pulls back, drawing her gaze and halting the motion of her hips. “You’re lying?” It’s not so much a question as pained disbelief. He hesitates, but visibly—even in the darkness—straightens, entwines their fingers together. “Chloe, I… tell me what’s wrong? _Please_?”

And it’s the way he says her name—like he doesn’t deserve such warmth—or maybe it’s just the honest pleading in his voice that breaks her. She tips forward, letting the tears slip down her cheeks and he catches her, easily, but this new display of supernatural grace only makes her cry harder. She means to preserve what little dignity she has left, but the sobs turn to wails she can no longer control. She can picture the baffled expression that must paint his face, but he merely lets her cling, gentle hand on her back, soothing whisper above her head. And she doesn’t want to let him go, even as some awful piece of her is repulsed by his divinity. Once she explains—and she has to, now; he deserves the truth he so freely gives returned—he’ll _rightly_ want nothing to do with her. So she prolongs the moment before the fall; wavers on that precipice with nausea creeping up her throat and a burning heaviness in her stomach.

When the sobs subside, mostly, she pulls away from him, drops onto the cold toilet lid. She wants her clothes, as if they’ll make her feel any less exposed, and wants to turn the light on. Wants to see him almost as much as she can’t stand the idea of watching her betrayal twist his noble features to a visceral ugliness.

She feels more than hears him kneel on the floor, shifting closer to her but remaining silent, waiting—as he always does, when it truly matters—for her judgement to raise him up. Or else fell him.

Her voice, when she finally forces the words out, is so flat it barely sounds like her. “I can’t do this.”

A strangled half-syllable catches in his throat. “You… _can’t_ …?” And his bewilderment cut her to the bone, but the resignation in his muttered, “Of course you can’t,” slices deep into her soul.

He makes to stand, but she can’t let him leave thinking this is _his_ fault, so she tries to explain—she _does_ —but all that makes it out is a quiet, broken, “ _no_ …”

“No?” His eyes flash, burning embers in the black. “No, you _can_ do this, but you’ve decided to _lie_ to me?” His breathing turns harsh and shaking. “Or _no_ , I… _horrify_ you, but you aren’t quite done torturing me yet?”

But she can’t speak, can’t even move. Her rising panic, held unsteadily at arm’s reach, breaks from her grasp, invades her mind and she can’t… _anything_.

He stands and starts pacing erratically, steps as unpoised as she’s ever heard them. There’s even a groan from that errant floorboard and it snaps her into a worse terror.

Was this what she _wanted_?

Sickness rises crueler than before. He’s not supernally elegant now, is he? No unnatural stillness nor, even, a trace of aberrant grace remain. He’s just a _man_ now. She’s finally managed to bring him down to her level, and it’s this thought that drags her over the edge. Her knees protest as she tumbles from the toilet, slamming the seat up and vomiting into its depths. And he’s _beyond_ angry—the strength of his wrath is a physical presence, stifling in the small room—but his steps falter and he crouches next to her anyway, hand reaching out, close enough she can feel that heat that so disturbed her, but now it’s all she can do not to press into its warmth.

“Are you… ok?” he asks through gritted teeth, though he’s clearly trying to keep his tone steady, comforting. He’s _trying_. He sweeps her hair from her face with hesitant fingers as she retches again, bringing up nothing but bile.

There’s a slight rustling noise and the sound of running water before a cup is pressed gently against her lips. She makes herself sip slowly, trying to calm her breathing, slow her racing thoughts. She didn’t realize how badly her throat’s been burning until the coolness soothes away the ache and clears the sourness from her tongue. He hands her a damp washcloth and she wipes at her lips, pressing her fingertips to them, finding them cold and chapped. When he takes the cloth from her he turns the water back on to clean it and she hears the towel rack clink as he hangs it up to dry. She opens her mouth, meaning to thank him, but he joins her again on the floor and she can’t catch her breath. In this moment his attention is suffocating, his care nearly as wounding as it is healing.

She doesn’t deserve him.

She remembers their conversation on the beach, when she kissed him the first time. _I don’t deserve you_ , he’d said, and she said, what… _probably not_? The pain is so sharp and sudden that her anguished gasp comes out as near hysterical laughter; the idea that their own self-sabotage keeps ruining their relationship _would_ be funny if it didn’t hurt so goddamn much.

Thankfully confusion seems to beat out offense, as he’s now panicking quietly next to her. “Are you _crashing_? Do I…? Is there a button that fixes a malfunctioning human?”

She tries to respond, but the laughter only intensifies.

“I don’t… Tell me what to do. _Please_ , Chloe.”

And, again, her name on his tongue breaks her from her spell. She lets her legs give out from under her, settling onto the floor. She leans back against the edge of the bathtub, breaths blowing too fast from her nostrils as she bites her lip, trying to keep the panic at bay. She shuts her eyes tightly and pushes out in one shaky exhalation, “I don’t want you to go.”

He’s stood back up, but seems frozen to the spot. “You don’t…?” He shakes his head so violently she can hear the motion. “What do you _want_ from me?”

Her foot moves, against her will, to brush his ankle.

He flinches away with an aching whimper, head bowed low enough she can see his eyes again, gleaming dully. “What did I do wrong?” he asks quietly.

“ _Nothing_ ,” she says.

He snorts disbelievingly, too loud in the small space.

“You didn’t… It wasn’t…”

“What, it’s not me it’s you?”

“I… You’re not human!”

The temperature in the room plummets. She shivers against the suddenly freezing tiles.

“Oh, I _see_.” His tone is ugly. “You’ll have the Devil in your bed, but not your life?” He chokes back a sob, badly masking it in spite. “I thought you were…” But his voice fails him. He turns, his hand catching on the doorknob and he’s going to leave. He’s going to leave and she knows he won’t come back. Not after _that_.

“It’s not the Devil, it’s the angel!”

“What?” He whips back around, fast enough that the displaced air flutters her hair.

“It isn’t who you are, or anything you’ve done. It… it’s like…” She sighs. “Nothing touches you.”

“What do you—?”

“Sex. It’s… Or that’s… part of it.”

He blinks. “You’re dissatisfied with my performance? My technique?”

“No, I… _That’s_ the problem, Lucifer. It can’t just be something _you_ do. It has to be something we do _together_.”

“I… I don’t understand.” He sounds so young, so… _lost_. “Am I not pleasing to you?”

Her jaw clenches. “Well I know I’m not to you.”

“Of _course_ you are.” He kneels again, taking her hand. “Darling, I—”

“And it’s not just that.”

Who is she even trying to convince at this point? But the words won’t stop, forcing their way from her throat with stomach churning agony, making her leap again. What was it the French called it? L’appel du vide? The call of the void. Looking over the edge, imagining what it’d be like to fall.

“There’s too many reminders that you’re _immortal_ , and I’m just…” She severs their connection again, buries her face in her hands. “I’ll get old and _die_ and you-you’ll still be the same. I… It can’t work.” She scrubs at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not your fault, but I tried and I just… I _can’t_.

“There is no happy ending for us.”

And his responding silence is like the stillness of death.


	2. sorrows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone so much for the comments on the first chapter and thanks again to my lovely betas.
> 
> I hope you like the conclusion!

> who would believe them winged  
>  who would believe they could be
> 
> beautiful—who would believe  
>  they could fall so in love with mortals
> 
> that they would attach themselves  
>  as scars attach and ride the skin
> 
> sometimes we hear them in our dreams  
>  rattling their skulls—clicking
> 
> their bony fingers  
>  they have heard me beseeching
> 
> as i whispered into my own  
>  cupped hands—enough—not me again
> 
> but who can distinguish  
>  one human voice
> 
> amid such choruses  
>  of desire

-Lucille Clifton-

* * *

 

She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting here.

Her hips have gone concerningly numb pressed, as they are, between cold porcelain and colder tile. Her legs feel fuzzy, like they wouldn’t hold her weight. If he’s still here—and she’s reasonably certain he is, unless he can disappear without a sound—he’s not talking, not even audibly breathing. She doesn’t think it’s ever been this dark in here, but maybe his presence has banished the light from the room. They’ve never really talked about what he can do, barely talked about who he is. This collapse was, now that she can think halfway clearly about it, a long time coming. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

His voice cuts through her thoughts, hoarse and strident. “What if I fell?”

From the apparent source of the sound, he’s sitting, back pressed against the door. She blinks, though it’s hard to tell, in this darkness, that her eyes were open in the first place. “But didn’t you already…?”

“I mean _properly_ ,” he says, wistful and horrified at the same time—it’s a heart wrenching combination. “No power, no sovereignty. I’d be… mortal.”

She shakes her head. “You’d never be happy as a human.” She knows him well enough to understand that, at least.

“No,” he admits bitterly. “I suppose not. And, when I died, I’d go to Hell regardless, so that’s not much of a solution.”

She frowns. “Why?”

“ _Why_?” And his sardonic near-laugh sounds so much like he normally does it rips at her very being. “I am barred from the Silver City. _Nothing_ can change that.”

They lapse back into an uneasy silence, but she breaks it, feeling a little hysterical again. “I guess you could invade Heaven when I die?”

“I would.”

He doesn’t exactly sound happy about the prospect, but it sobers her immediately. “You can’t!”

He chuckles darkly. “Oh, I certainly could. And I might even win…” He trails off, talking more to himself than her. “I nearly succeeded the last time and I’m rather more… _motivated_ now.”

Her brain lurches a little. “Is this a legitimate option?”

“Absolutely.” He’s smirking at her; she can hear it in his voice. “Just so long as you’re willing to accept the consequences.”

“What are the—?”

“Ever read Revelation?”

“…oh.” She slumps back against the tub. “Well, since I’m some sort of… _miracle,_ maybe your Dad has a plan?”

The anger that had condensed like a physical thing reappears for a moment before he reins it back in. “I’m sure he _does_ have a plan, but I doubt you’ll like it and I know _I_ won’t.” He sighs, frustrated. “I know that I’m much more adept at grand gestures than…” His head bangs a little against the door. “I suppose I have been… distant.”

The vindication is far more bitter than sweet, but she can’t find the reassurances that are normally so easy to reach.

He staggers to his feet and she can see sunlight again, streaming through the crack under the door. “I _am_ desire, but I’m not allowed it. Do you understand? Whenever I dare to want I _break_. And for you, I shatter _far_ too easily.”

She drags herself up to stand, but the nausea rises again.

He catches her by the elbow.

She leans her forehead against his chest. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I know,” he says, resting his chin on her head. “But I fear you’re right. This… _can’t_ work.”

She wraps her arms around him. “We shouldn’t keep doing this.”

His fingers thread gently through her hair, hand against her back. “I don’t…” He shivers, voice breaking. “I don’t want to let you go.”

And she has never known such safety as she feels in his arms, even as he shakes and she weeps, quietly, against him. She has no words left—there are no words, for this. And it would be, maybe not easy, but _possible_ to pretend that love is enough, that their differences aren’t too much to deal with, that theirs is more than a barren, macabre dance. But she is no acquiescent maiden, giving herself up to Death. No Persephone to follow him to the underworld and be his queen. And he doesn’t want that, she knows.

_All_ he wants is her, and she can’t even give him that.

“This is why I don’t think of the future,” he mutters a little resentfully, though he makes no move to pull away. “There is nothing waiting there but loss.”

She smooths her palms over where his scars once lay. “Knowing it’s all real… Heaven, Hell, I-I thought it would make me _hopeful_.”

“I’ve always found hope to be the cruelest impulse.” His cynicism is as rejuvenating as it is suffocating.

“Why try at all then— _us_ , I mean—if you didn’t…?”

He shudders, and she thinks he won’t respond. _Can’t_. But then he shifts in her embrace, squares his shoulders. “When I’m with you, I… it makes me wish I still had faith.”

“But… you don’t.”

And even he has no words now.

She gropes along the wall. The light switch is never where she expects it to be. There’s nothing to say, but still… she needs to see him. He blinks down at her in confusion for a moment, before his bafflement resolves itself and she can see—in the lines of his face, the tension in his jaw—the essential fragility he hides, even from her. But he’s too weary now to keep up the pretense.

They both are.

She bites her lip and the motion draws her gaze to the mirror. She’s got that hard, blazing look she gets when she’s drunk—and he does intoxicate her, but this is not _that_. Not half so rapturous, nor half as agonizing. She looks back at him and he’s waiting, _again_ , but not to learn his fate this time. No. _That_ , he’s certain, is already sealed. She steels herself, taking a deep breath that’s meant to be cleansing, but the only thing she finds is his scent. He smells mainly of her now—sweat and salt and the soft floral notes of her body wash—with enough of his heat she never wants to breathe anything else, could almost believe he’s… She groans, exasperated at him, at herself, at the _world_.

“Why does this have to be so complicated?”

He laughs. It’s a lonely, hollow sound. “You’re of the Devil’s party now. Don’t you see? I don’t _get_ to win. I-I apologize.”

“Don’t you blame this on yourself.”

“But it’s my fault.” He hesitates. “Isn’t it?”

And his honest uncertainty breaks her all over again. “No. _None_ of this is your fault. If anything… it’s mine. I could’ve just kept my mouth shut, but—”

“There’s no use in lying.” He shakes his head. “It-it would’ve fallen apart anyway.” He pulls away from her, paws ineffectually at his overlong stubble and watches himself, as she did, in the mirror. Like there might be answers hidden in their reflections. But there’s nothing there except themselves laid bare; no god in the machine to come and fix everything with a gentle promise and a sweeter kiss.

She meets his brittle gaze through glass and burnished silver. It’s easier than looking straight at him; like an eclipse in camera obscura, it keeps her from being blinded by the radiance. By the violent contrast between light and shadow. His pleading eyes don’t say all the things he can’t, but something in their depths softens and she understands fully, for the first time, that she’s already cast her lot with him. She made that decision a long time ago.

She sees, suddenly, two other people confronted by their own nakedness—his eyes darkened in resignation, hers too bright with stubbornness. She tasted of the fruit and its savor turned to ash in her mouth. The ghost of its flavor—of _his_ —sweeps her tongue as she watches these figures who are them, but are _not_ them tear at their clothes, beat at the ground, call out to their creator.

_Why? My God, why?_

But she knows. She’s always known. She’s as condemned by his sins as he is by hers.

“We fall together.” Her voice is steadier than she expects. He opens his mouth to protest, but she presses on. “Even _you_ can’t control the future, but this…” And she turns back to him, taking his hand and pressing it over her heart. “This is something _we_ can choose.”

“This isn’t a solution.” He sounds so certain, but his fingers tighten against hers anyway.

“No, it’s not,” she admits easily. “But that’s the point. What’s that quote? The mind can make a Heaven of Hell?”

“Milton was wrong, love,” he says, eyes closing in practiced weariness. “Hell is… _irredeemable_.”

He makes to pull away, but she moves with him, bringing up her other hand to better capture his. “Heaven without you _would_ be Hell.”

His eyes flutter back open, watching their clasped hands like he’s memorizing their contours. “You-you’d never see your family again. Your father, your mother, _Beatrice_ … I’m not worth it.”

_I’m not worth it._

Something else he said on that beach. And there’s a frightening truth in his words, something deep and dark and aching, but they can’t keep making the same mistakes. They need to make new ones. “Yes, you are.”

He stares down at her, gaze ancient, disbelief etched in its hollows. “It-it’s too great a sacrifice,” he forces out, eventually.

She shrugs. “Life is sacrifice, right?” If she’s learned anything from life, she’s definitely learned that.

“So sacrifice me!”

His self-hatred burns into her. She wishes he could see himself the way she sees him, without the metal and glass that can’t help but distort the truth. His self-deluding lies are the links in his armor, but they’re also the links of his chains.

“No,” she says, with far more conviction than she feels. “I won’t abandon you like—”

“But isn’t that how this started? ‘This can’t work,’ you said.”

And that’s entirely fair, but she won’t deceive him the way he deceives himself. “I never would have left. Not like _that_.”

He doesn’t seem to know what to do with that, but he’s as unwilling to pull away as she is. The edge of the counter digs into her hip, presses against his thigh, grounding them. He gathers himself. “You would… _willingly_ damn yourself?”

She reaches up to brush her knuckles against his jaw slowly, deliberately. “I know that choice is more important to you than anything, but I didn’t _choose_ to fall in love.”

He growls. “My father—”

“I’m not talking about that,” she says quietly. She strokes up his cheek, feeling the muscles relax under her fingertips. “ _No one_ chooses to fall in love. All we can choose is what we do about it.”

In his anger, he must have missed the word the first time, but he certainly hears it now. His gaze locks as she continues the motion of her fingers, working him through the knee-jerk panic. Eventually he lets out a stuttering exhalation.

She heads him off before he can speak. “And don’t you dare tell me I can’t or I’m wrong because I _know_ how I feel.”

“No,” he mutters. He takes another shaky breath, leans unconsciously into her touch. “You’re much too strong willed.” He flashes something resembling a smile, though pain tightens at the corners of his mouth.

“Do _you_ love me?” she can’t help asking.

“Yes, of course,” he says, a little gruffly but so matter-of-factly she might have asked if two and two make four. “More than every star I put in the sky.”

She leans up, presses their foreheads together, and aches at the familiarity of the pose. “Then love me.”

“But—”

“I’ve got what? Forty years? And that’s if I’m _lucky_?”

He tries to pull away, close his eyes against truths he’s unwilling to accept.

She catches his face in her hands and forces eye contact. “No, listen. Forty years, _maybe_ , and then, well…” She takes a slow breath. “Whatever happens, it… it won’t be our choice anymore.”

He opens his mouth, but she cuts off his denial.

“And I know that for _you_ , that’s nothing, but—”

“Chloe,” he says softly. “That’s _everything_.” He brushes a lock of hair from her face. “But I don’t… How can you be so _ok_ with this?”

“I’m _not_ ,” she shoots back, but she keeps her hands gentle where they’ve settled on his shoulders. “I mean… _shit_ , Lucifer, this is…” She shakes her head. “But all I can do is choose this, choose _us_ , because even if we don’t get forty years, or ten, or-or even one. Even if… even if we only had today or just this one, single moment, I… I’d still want to spend it with you.”

She finds herself breathing hard and nearly expects him to run as tight as his muscles are under her fingers. Almost runs herself. Her hands are shaking hard enough to rasp against his skin and she barely feels it when he reaches to steady them, not pushing her away but pulling her closer still. She comes back to herself to the sound of him whispering her name.

“Oh, Chloe. Chloe, darling, don’t cry.” His thumb brushes softly over her cheek as he catches a tear.

She’s assailed, then, with a vision of faceless figures dressed in black, fresh turned earth blanketed by gentle rain, a soul ascending to a lonely eternity or else sinking into darkness, dragging the sun down with it into endless night.

But sunsets are beautiful, aren’t they?

“Maybe the ending isn’t what matters. Maybe…” She reaches up, catches his hand in hers. “Maybe what really matters is taco Tuesday and catching bad guys and—”

“Watching movies with the spawn?” he asks, hesitant. “And… game nights and stealing Dan’s pudding and-and bringing you lattes with caramel drizzle?”

They lapse into a comfortable silence and, in this moment, she watches him. His eyes are still a little too dark, a little too dull, but there’s the hint of a spark there, flickering in their depths and, when she pulls their hands away and leans up to press a kiss to his lips, it flares to life.

Her smile comes involuntarily again, but this time she welcomes it. “And if this is all we might get then why don’t we make the most of it?”

And the stark, unexpected joy on his face is sweeter still than dusk, and far more bitter than the dawn.


End file.
